Benson's Union Democracy Blog: Stern’s threat to trustee west coast SEIU local poses danger to democracy in labor movement

From: http://bensonsudblog.blogspot.com

Andy Stern, international president of the Service Employees International Union threatens a trusteeship over the United Healthcare Workers-West and the removal of its president, Sal Rosselli. The reach of the imminent trusteeship is awesome: With 140,000 members, this local enrolls about one-tenth the total membership of the whole SEIU. It represents registered nurses and non-professional healthcare workers in scores of institutions. Rosselli, its president, is an eminent figure in the labor movement and in the politics of California. He had been SEIU state president and a member of the union’s international executive committee. Inside the SEIU he has been a vigorous critic of Stern’s policies, actually the only outspoken critic with a strong power base in the union. Wipe out Rosselli, and Stern, with an unchecked monopoly of power, can continue to move anywhere in any direction without restraint.

But it is not the scope of this trusteeship that would make it unique. Over the years, hundreds of union subsidiary bodies have been trusteed by their international unions. Most have been relatively small locals taken over by their internationals, sometimes for legitimate reasons, and sometimes to suppress a local leadership out of favor with an arrogant international officialdom. Occasionally, a major subsidiary came under trusteeship, like the 120,000-member AFSCME’s DC 37 in New York; but in that case, district and local officers had been indicted for stealing local money and falsifying a contract referendum.

What would make a current trusteeship move by Stern different from all the rest is this: for the first time since the adoption of the LMRDA in 1959, a massive trusteeship has been threatened against so major a section of a union for politically repressive objectives.